Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

Implied Warranties Of Non-Infringement, Louis Robertson

Michigan Law Review

When a manufacturer or dealer sells a product, is there an implied warranty that the product does not infringe adversely-owned patents? In other words, does the purchaser who is successfully sued for infringement have the right, without an indemnity clause, to be indemnified by the seller?

Many lawyers, especially patent lawyers, who are accustomed to advising the insertion of express patent warranties in sales contracts to take care of the matter, have answered this question instantly and positively in the negative, and it is quite possible that according to fundamental principles of implied warranties they are right, and yet all …

The Patentability Of A Mental Process, John B. Waite

Articles

The fact of possession has been so correlated with the theory of property that it is difficult to dissociate ownership from the possibility of physical possession. One finds that the average lawyer, even though he may defind a right in rem as a right enforcible against any person, is extremely apt, unless after especial thought, to explain that it is enforcible against anyone because it pertains to a thing capable of physical possession and control, a thing that could be actually sequestered, from all other persons. Not at all infrequently the term property has been judicially stripped even of its …

The Patentability Of A Principle Of Nature, John B. Waite

Articles

The extent to which courts will go in conceding patentability to a natural law, or principle of nature, is evidenced in the case of Minerals Separation Co. v. Hyde, 37 Sup. Ct. -, decided by the Supreme Court, December 11, 1916. It has always been more or less an axiom of patent law that the discovery of a principle of nature does not entitle the discoverer to a patent for it. The case usually thought of first as authority therefor, is that of Morton v. New York Eye Infirmary, 5 Blatch. 116, 2 Fisher 320. The patentees in that case …

Restrictions On The Use Of Patented Articles, Edward S. Rogers

Michigan Law Review

The case of Henry v. Dick recently decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, has occasioned considerable unfavorable comment in the public press. It seems to be the opinion of many that the decision lays down a new principle of law, particularly adaptable to the working of a monopoly, and that the public is, under the supposed new principle, exposed to a practically unlimited exploitation by any patentee. It is believed that neither of these contentions is correct.